Third division side Rot-Weiss Essen are guests of FC Ingolstadt on Saturday. Last weekend, the focus was on the annual general meeting.
After five league wins in a row, the players of Rot-Weiss Essen did not play last weekend due to the international break. Head coach Christoph Dabrowski gave them three days off before the ball was rolled again at Hafenstraße last Sunday.
Before the training session, however, the players, coaching staff and all the club officials were together at the extraordinary annual general meeting at Messe Essen. Unlike the aborted AGM in June, this event was a success.
When the team said goodbye, they were celebrated by the approximately 460 RWE members in attendance with chants of “away win” in anticipation of the upcoming third division game at FC Ingolstadt (November 25, 2 p.m.). It was an all-round successful and positive day for Rot-Weiss Essen.
Dabrowski saw it similarly. A few days later, the former professional said at Thursday’s press conference: “The team was really greeted and seen off with applause. Everything the people in charge had to say sounded very good. It all made sense. It was all very positive. Nevertheless, I didn’t have the feeling that the guys were flying high during the subsequent training session because they were so frenetically celebrated. Quite the opposite. The guys just wanted to play football again and spend time together after three days off. It will continue to push the guys to get such encouragement.”
We trained well overall, got fully into our load parameters and the team is optimally prepared to go into the game on Saturday.
Christoph Dabrowski.
Two days after the AGM, the U21 international between Germany and Poland took place at the Stadion an der Hafenstraße on Tuesday evening. When asked whether this game disrupted their own preparations, Dabrowski replied:
“The game only affected our schedule on Monday. We had planned to do a double session then, but we had to clear the locker rooms in the afternoon. That’s why we started training at 8:45 a.m. It was a very long session on the pitch, and we also integrated our strength training into it. Tuesday was a day off, but that was planned that way. We didn’t have access to the stadium at all. We trained hard overall, got fully into our training parameters and the team is optimally prepared to go into the game on Saturday.”